Bizarre Creations

The past 13 months were bad for racing game fans. Two of the best developers in the genre closed their doors. Bizarre Creations, which made Blur and Project Gotham Racing, was shuttered. After that, Black Rock Studios, the creator of Split/Second and Pure, followed suit. With the dissolution of these teams, there was a lot of talent out there.

At the same time, Turn 10 was looking to expand its Forza franchise. That misfortune and that opportunity intersected at Playground Games. Started by four former Codemaster developers, the team embarked on creating their own racing game and shared the same vision and enthusiasm for autoracing as Turn 10. The initial core quickly grew as it picked up team members from the shuttered U.K. companies.

The result of their collective work is an upcoming spin-off called Forza Horizon. Not much is known about the project other than it’s coming this fall. But with top talent from those big studios, this game can easily be a top-tier racing title. It’s almost like the Miami Heat of racing developers.

The James Bond movie franchise appears to be in dire straits nowadays. There hasn’t been a new film since 2008, and from the looks of it, there won’t be any new ones for a while. According to Entertainment Weekly, the franchise’s owner, MGM, put itself up for sale last November, but with no buyers yet any 007 movie would be put on hold. That could mean no Bond movies for years. So where can fans get their fix?

Activision’s Bizarre Creations is stepping up to the task, developing a standalone entry to the franchise. Blood Stone boasts high production values with Daniel Craig as Bond and Joss Stone as his love interest. The singer does voice work and even wrote the opening theme. To top that off, the team got GoldenEye co-writer Bruce Feirstein, actress Judi Dench and the past film’s costume designer on board.

With all that talent, Blood Stone may be the closest fans will get to an actual Bond film for a while.

Although sim racing has dominated the store shelves for the better part of a decade, the next few months could show that arcade racing is making a comeback. Two developers known for their racing chops will be offering their take on the genre. Bizarre Creations, long known for its Project Gothan Racing series, is working on a new project that mixes kart racing with real-world cars and Black Rock Studio, makers of Pure, offers a Jerry Bruckheimer/Michael Bay sensibility to wheeling around the track.

With Blur, Bizarre Creations creates an unlikely combination: It’s a kart racer that uses 60 real-world cars and 47 tracks based on 14 different environments. At E3, I had a chance to check out the game, and I had fun with the concept. There’s definitely a concreteness there that separates the title from the cartoonish roots of the genre.

You definitely won’t be throwing around turtle shells or using mushrooms for boost. Instead, players will race around familiar-looking locales (I thought I was driving through L.A. at one point.) and use weapons with real-world concepts like shunt, shock, barge, nitro and mines. Players also have shield which absorb some of these weapons but to actually use it, they’ll have to press the X button at the right moment.